Made in Heaven and Set in Hell

“I’m taking my ride with destiny
Willing to play my part
Living with painful memories
Loving with all my heart

Oh I know, I know, I know that it’s true
Yes it’s really meant to be

I’m taking my ride with destiny
Willing to play my part
Living with painful memories
Loving with all my heart

Made in heaven, made in heaven
It was all meant to be, yeah
Made in heaven, made in heaven
That’s what they say
Can’t you see
That’s what everybody says to me
Can’t you see

Deep in my heart

I’m having to learn to pay the price
They’re turning me upside down
Waiting for possibilities
Don’t see too many around

Made in heaven, made in heaven
It’s for all to see
Made in heaven, made in heaven
That’s what everybody says
Everybody says to me
It was really meant to be
Oh can’t you see
Yeah everybody, everybody says
Yes it was meant to be
Yeah yeah

When stormy weather comes around
It was made in heaven
When sunny skies break through behind the clouds
I wish it could last forever, yeah
Wish it could last forever, forever

Made in heaven
I’m playing my role in history
Looking to find my goal
Taking in all this misery
But giving it all my soul

Made in heaven, made in heaven
It was all meant to be
Made in heaven, made in heaven
That’s what everybody says
Wait and see, it was really meant to be
So plain to see
Yeah, everybody, everybody, everybody tells me so
Yes it was plain to see, yes it was meant to be
Written in the stars…
Written in the stars…
Written in the stars…”

 
 

Artwork and photos by Richard Gray

 
 

The two covers are not genuine original photographs, but a pair of composite shots. The two different cover shots of the view across Lake Geneva, were of one of sunrise and the other of sunset. Brian, Roger and John were photographed in a London studio, and the statue was still in it’s sculpturer’s/maker’s studio for it’s part of the photo session. The building on stilts, otherwise known as the duckhouse, is at one end of the lake shore at Montreux, and Freddie’s statue is pretty much at the other, and just a short distance from the band’s studios there.

Made in Heaven is the third single recorded by Freddie Mercury, and his fourth release as a solo artist Mr. Bad Guy. Originally featured in the mentioned Mercury’s debut album, the song was slightly edited and published as a 45rpm paired with She Blows Hot and Cold, described on the record sleeve as ‘A Brand New Track’. The single reached #57 on the UK Singles Chart.

After Mercury’s death, the song’s title gave the name to Queen’s 1995 posthumous album Made in Heaven. The song was also chosen, along with I Was Born to Love You, to be re-recorded for the album, with the previous vocals over a newly recorded instrumental track.

The song’s video was realized with the help of David Mallet, previously involved in the making of the music video for I Was Born to Love You, as well as five Queen clips. A Royal Opera House replica was built inside a warehouse in northern London (normal studios didn’t have high enough roofs), where Mercury wanted to recreate scenes from Stravinsky‘s The Rite of Spring and Dante‘s Inferno. The most remarkable element is probably the 67-foot tall rotating globe on top of which the singer stands in the last part of the videoclip. The outfit that Mercury wears in this music video is quite similar to the outfit worn in the music video for Queen song Radio Ga Ga.

 

To watch the music video, please click on the next link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Genealogy-of-Style/597542157001228

A Commentary on Television Overtaking Radio’s Popularity

Still from Radio Gaga (David Mallet, 1983) music video

 
 

The inspiration for Radio Gaga came when Roger Taylor heard his son utter the words “radio ca-ca” while listening to a bad song on the radio while they were in Los Angeles. After hearing the phrase, Taylor began writing the song when he locked himself in a room with a Roland Jupiter-8 and a drum machine. He thought it would fit his solo album, but when the band heard it, John Deacon wrote a bassline and Freddie Mercury reconstructed the track, thinking it could be a big hit. Taylor then took a skiing holiday and let Mercury polish the lyrics, harmony, and arrangements of the song. Recording sessions began at Record Plant Studios and included Canadian session keyboardist Fred Mandel, who later on would work with Supertramp and Elton John. Mandel programmed the Jupiter’s arpeggiated synth-bass parts. The recording features prominent use of the Roland VP330+ vocoder. The bassline was produced by a Roland Jupiter-8, using the built-in arpeggiator.

Recorded in 1983 and released in January 1984, the song was a commentary on television overtaking radio’s popularity and how one would listen to radio in the past for a favorite comedy, drama, or science fiction programme. It also pertained to the advent of the music video and MTV, which was now competing with radio as an important medium for promoting records. Ironically, Queen had done much to popularize the music video with Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975 and the video for Radio Ga Ga would become a regular staple on MTV in 1984. It was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award that year. Roger Taylor was quoted:

“ That’s part of what the song’s about, really. The fact that they [music videos] seem to be taking over almost from the aural side, the visual side seems to be almost more important.

The song makes reference to two important radio events of the 20th century; Orson Welles‘ 1938 broadcast of H.G. Wells‘ The War of the Worlds in the lyric “through wars of worlds/invaded by Mars”, and Winston Churchill‘s 18 June 1940 This was their finest hour speech from the House of Commons, in the lyric “You’ve yet to have your finest hour”. American pop singer Lady Gaga credits her stagename to this song. She stated: “I adored Freddie Mercury and Queen had a hit called ‘Radio Gaga’. That’s why I love the name.”

David Mallet‘s music video for the song features scenes from Fritz Lang‘s 1927 German expressionist science fiction film Metropolis and was filmed at Carlton TV Studios and Shepperton Studios, London, in November 1983. It features the band in a car flying over the title city, and later performing the song in front of the city’s working class. Freddie Mercury’s solo song Love Kills was used in Giorgio Moroder‘s restored version of the film, and in exchange Queen were granted the rights to use footage from it in their Radio Ga Ga video. However, Queen had to buy performance rights to the film from the communist East German government, which was the copyright holder at the time. At the end of the music video, the words “Thanks To Metropolis” appear.

 

To watch the music video, please take a gander at The Genealogy of Style’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Genealogy-of-Style/597542157001228?ref=hl

Fashion’s Future?

Giles Deacon and supermodels Elize Crombez, Karen Elson, Missy Rayder, Hana Soukupova, Stella Tennant, Eugenia Volodina, Marija Vujovic and Raquel Zimmermann (DNA Model Management, NYC) photographed by Sølve Sundsbø for Harper’s Bazaar, December 2005

Stamped Lips

Stamped Lips, Andy Warhol, 1959

 

Yves Saint Laurent Spring Summer 1971

 

 Lips print dress from Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, Harpers & Queen, early April 1971. Model: Viviane Fauny. Photo: Helmut Newton

 

Dresses Yves Saint Laurent,  Vogue Italia, February 1971, Photo By Chris Von Wagenheim

 

YSL 1973

 

Zooey Deschanel for ELLE in Saint Laurent by Slimane Lip Print dress, Spring 2014

 

Rihanna wearing the sequined one shoulder top, also by Slimane. Vogue, March 2014. Photo: David Sims

 

Kristen Stewart on the cover of Marie Claire UK, May 2014

 

Marc Jacobs cosmetic bag

 

Lulu Guiness lips clutch

 

Sonia by Sonia Rykiel, 2014

 

Peter Jensen SS 2014

 

Giles Deacon SS 2014

 

Alice and Olivia, Resort Collection 2014

 

Prada Spring Summer 2000 ad campaign

 

Michelle Williams on  the cover of ELLE, December 2011 wearing a Prada dress

 

Prada Resort Collection 2012 ad campaign

Swan’s Way

Blazon

For the Countess of Peralta

 
 

The snow-white Olympic swan,
with beak of rose-red agate,
preens his Eucharistic wing,
which he opens to the sun like a fan.

 

His shining neck is curved
like the arm of a lyre,
like the handle of a Greek amphora,
like the prow of a ship.

 

He is the swan of divine origin
whose kiss mounted through fields
of silk to the rosy peaks
of Leda’s sweet hills.

 

White king of of Castalia’s fount,
his triumph illumines the Danube;
Da Vinci was his baron in Italy;
Lohengrin is his blond prince.

 

His whiteness is akin to linen,
to the buds of the white roses,
to the diamantine white
of the fleece of an Easter lamb.

 

He is the poet of perfect verses,
and his lyric cloak is of ermine;
he is the magic, the regal bird
who, dying, rhymes the soul in his song.

 

This winged aristocrat displays
white lilies on a blue field;
and Pompadour, gracious and lovely,
has stroked his feathers.

 

He rows and rows on the lake
Where a golden gondola waits
For the sweetheart of Louis of Bavaria.

 

Countess, give the swans your love,
for they are gods of an alluring land
and are made of perfume and ermine,
of white light, of silk, and of dreams.

Ruben Darío

 
 

Photo: Bruce Weber

 
 

Carmen Dell’Orefice by Norman Parkinson, 1980

 
 

Swaroski logo

 
 

Bathyllus in the swan dance, Aubrey Beardsley

 
 

Henri Matisse making a study of a swan in the Bois de Boulogne, c. 1930

 
 

Advertisement illustrated by René Gruau

 
 

Illustration to Garcia Márquez’s short story Bon Voyage Mr. President, by Josie Portillo

 
 

Still from The Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)

 
 

Anna Pavlova

 
 

Still from The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (Bill Condon, 2011)

 
 

Helena Bonham Carter

 
 

Laetita Casta. Photo: Mario Testino

 
 

Uma Thurman and Mikahil Baryshnikov as The Swan Prince. Photo: Arthur Elgort

 
 

Truman Capote styled his beautiful and wealthy female friends “swans”

 
 

Accompained by Lee Radziwill and Jane Haward

 
 

With socialité Babe Paley in Paris

 
 

Escorting CZ Guest

 
 

Capote and Gloria Vanderbilt Lumet arrive at New York’s 54th Street Theatre for the opening performance of Caligula., 16 Feb 1960

 
 

Gloria Vanderbilt ad campaigns

 
 

Ludwig II (Luchino Visconti, 1972). He was sometimes called the Swan King

 
 

Mirror, Mirror (Tarsem Singh, 2012)

 
 

Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby (Jack Clayton, 1974)

 
 

Leonardo di Caprio. Photo: Annie Leibovitz

 
 

Madonna. Photo: David LaChapelle

 
 

David Bowie

 
 

Ad campaign featured in Vogue, January 1997

 
 

Tory Burch swan-print wedge sandalias

 
 

Swan Evening dress by Charles James, 1951

 
 

Kate Moss wearing a Givenchy gown by Ricardo Tisci, Spring-Summer collection 2011

 
 

Giles Deacon Spring-Summer 2012 collection

 
 

Erin O’Connor wearing a gown by Alexander McQueen. Photo: Tim Walker

 
 

Eglingham Children and Swan on Beach, Tim Walker, 2002